Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Unbelievable (PLL #4) by Sara Shepard | Rating: ★★★★★

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the naughtiest of them all?

Sara Shepard’s bestselling series Pretty Little Liars continues on with its fourth installment: Unbelievable – with more drama and revelations than the last. It should be noted, too, that a good chunk of our questions are finally answered and the identity of the notorious anonymous texter is revealed.

And with every answer, with every turn, the title proves to be a proper fit. As with the last three books from the series, we pick up right where we left off in the residents lives of Rosewood. Now, answers are near the point of being revealed when it comes to discoveries on who killed Alison and who is tormenting the girls anonymously.

Aria, Spencer, Emily and Hanna have all suffered from the harassment of A and in Unbelievable we can sense that this was only the beginning. A’s little game is far from over. Each girls lives have been changed drastically over the years and the gap between them all has only grown since the death of their clique leader all those years ago and now the wrath of A.

Can they escape this vicious circle? Is it possible?

Hanna is currently in the hospital after finding out the identity of A; who had promptly hit Rosewood’s resident It-Girls with a vehicle to shut her up. Life as Hanna knows it had already been on the rocks, as she lost everything she’d worked so hard for.

Down the drain went her popularity and her best friend: can things ever go back to normal? Just as they seem to, after she wakes with no memory of the night of her accident, and she gets her best friend Mona back, things go horribly horribly wrong and a betrayal shakes her to her very core.

And then there’s sweet little Emily who has been shipped off to live with her ridiculous and overly religious relatives in Iowa. When she heads to Iowa, she doesn’t expect things to go well and is pleasantly surprised to see that her cousins are actually sort-of-cool. And things look up when she meets a girl who she truly hits it off with.

But then she is caught sneaking in with her cousins and the blame is all pointed on her. Iowa is a no-go, now, and she is no longer welcome at her relatives home. But where can she go? It seems Emily Fields has no one – no family, no friends, no home.

And it’s painful to see her suffer through all of this. Fortunately for her, things do improve. She is able to come back home to Rosewood and–shocker–her family attempts to work through their problems and reaches out to her. But can this really last? And what will happen when a certain girl comes out to visit from Iowa.

Will Emily choose the new, mysterious girl? Or Maya? Or will they choose for her? And what happens when Maya becomes a bit suspicious and Emily feels certain the girl she had fallen in love with has been A all along?

Aria has been forced to move in with her father and his “home wrecking girlfriend” after her secret relationship with a teacher was revealed. I do feel bad for her in some ways; it would be very uncomfortable to live with her fathers mistress after hating her for all these years. But is there hope that the two can live together without hell being raised?

Spencer is now struggling to remember details of what happened the night Alison disappeared–died–and begins to grow paranoid that she had something to do with it. There are blackouts in her memory from that night and after all that happens to her, it’s understandable why she thinks she could have lost her temper. A only fuels these thoughts more – but in Rosewood, things are never as they seem.

Mona Vanderwaal earns the girls trust and reveals she, too, has been sent messages from A. She befriends the girls. She joins their circle. She even grows closer to Spencer, especially, who she freakishly seems to have genuine fun with. But then, it is revealed that she has been A this whole time.

And she is dangerous. But did she kill Ali? How did she know all of the liars secrets? It’s all revealed quite well, and Mona even takes to the idea of recruiting Spencer in her plans.

As it turns out, Jenna wasn’t the only one hurt during the incident referred to as the Jenna thing. Mona had been hit with some of the fireworks and was on the receiving end of some scars. Because of Alison’s bullying and the girls standing idly by, Mona grows to hate them. Her feelings of hate grow when she develops her own plan of revenge.

On one lucky day, when Maya’s family moves to Rosewood and disposes Alison’s belongings, Mona comes across Ali’s diary. This diary gives her an inside look to the girls lives and all their secrets – and A is born. Mona uses this journal religious and also lets it slip that Alison had an older boyfriend.

With all these revelations, the girls are left in a mess that is their life. Mona dies after she tries to kill Spencer and the liars believe their secrets are finally safe; they are more than ready to begin their A-free lives and move on. And who could possibly blame them?

Hanna is heartbroken and it’s obvious that this effects her the most. Not only has she lost one of her best friends to murder, and three to distance, now she has lost one to a whole new level of betrayal.

Little do they know that their lives are nowhere near becoming peaceful. With Mona’s revelation and death, arc one finishes. But things are far from over in Rosewood…

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BOOKED J is part literary part lifestyle blog featuring book reviews, discussions, hauls and photography, with an occasional sprinkle of personal writing tossed in for good measure. Now accepting blog tours and release week blitz. Created in the spring of 2007 by Jessica, now a twenty-something year old singer and avid reader from the Chicago area, who has no actual idea what she is doing.

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